I thought it was a fairly representative if truncated and compressed view of what a real world hearing would be. I thought the State Bar’s Counsel’s Direct Examination was a good example of how its done in real life (ok, he asked leading questions galore, but that’s a lost cause). One of the purposes of Direct Examinations is to protect your witnesses from the coming cross, and one common technique is to confront weaknesses head on and explain them away in Direct. The way they dealt with Chuck’s illness; pretty professionally done.
Of course IRL, Chuck would never volunteer that he played up his illness to Jimmy when ttapping him so brazenly.:smack:
I was very happy to see Huell! He’s a local (southern Illinois) comedian, and I had been on his facebook page for a long time, but the last few years he kind of dropped off the face of the Earth. He stopped promoting himself, I haven’t heard of him doing any more shows, etc. I was kind of worried, as I didn’t think his Breaking Bad role paid him enough to retire.
And of course, he was one of the few loose ends in Breaking Bad that never got tied up. So it’s was doubly awesome to see him on BCS, back in comedic form, and thinner and healthier, too.
Saul’s basically got his Breaking Bad crew back together again on this show (Mike, Huell, and his receptionist), so it’s no surprise that we hear Kim’s voice saying “Saul Goodman” on the preview for next week’s episode. This is basically it. The people who have never seen Breaking Bad will finally get to meet Better Call Saul’s title character.
I completely disagree. Jimmy is willing to break rules to do things that he thinks are right, but he still has a LOT of baseline morality. Sure, he fabricated evidence with a pie and video camera, but it was to keep a dumb guy who got in over his head out of prison where he’d probably die, it wasn’t to save someone bad. He concocted that whole robbery scheme on the Kettlemans, but he gave the money back to where it belonged. Certainly he scammed a lot of people, but they were all assholes - note that his ‘pay for my drinks’ scam only worked because the guy wanted to rip him off of his inheritance, and the ‘pay me and you can take the whole watch’ scam only works on someone willing to rob a guy passed out in an alley. He was offended by Sandpiper ripping off the residents and clearly cared about them, Saul Goodman would just go in for a piece of the action. Jimmy has shown no inclination to casually murder people, but one of his first suggestions in BB is for Walt and Jessie to pay for Badger to be shanked. Jimmy likes money but doesn’t seem that enthralled by it, and really seems to enjoy putting on his Perry Mason act for the old folks, while Saul just wanted big bags of cash as fast as possible.
I think there’s a huge difference between Jimmy now and Saul in BB, and we haven’t seen that transformation yet.
The board are all good friends of Chuck’s, and this was 2003 so personal electronic devices weren’t as common back then. I don’t think that 14 years ago voiding the room of cell phones would seem as drastic as it does today. Also, because it’s an adversarial hearing, if Chuck asked for it and Jimmy didn’t object, it would probably be granted, and Jimmy clearly didn’t object. (We would have seen him object at some point if he was opposed to it).
Only on TV, but vocal objections makes for more dramatic scenes. That was the one complaint I’d hear consistently about L&O’s court scenes - the whole “So you admit you were at the bar that night?” “Objection” “Withdrawn” sequence does not happen often in the real world, because you tend to get pulled aside by the judge and angrily told to cut it out or face contempt charges.
No exactly the same, but there are instances in which people allege “environmental sensitivity.” Most often claiming sensitivity to all chemicals. Was relatively common back in the 90s IIRC, around the same time as Epstein Barre.
Then there is the pretty uncommon condition where people feel thay have bugs/fibers crawling on/under their skin. Morgellon’s?
And it is not a crazy leap from Chuck to many somatoform/psychogenic complaints.
[QUOTE]
…she’s going to hate Jimmy because he made Chuck break down on the witness stand and exposed his illness. …
[QUOTE]
I didn’t see that. She has always liked him, and knows Chuck was difficult - even if she didn’t know the exact reason. To me, revealing the illness makes Jimmy seem like a saint, given all he did for Chuck for so many years. What was he supposed to do - keep the secret, even if doing so meant losing his license?
One kinda minor point - I didn’t get the necessity of Mike fixing the door. The photos didn’t impress me as all that useful. They didn’t even have them blown up, and presented them pretty briefly. Probably could have gotten the same info out more dramatically by questioning Howard or others about what Chuck described as a “normal” house.
And we all presume Mike got contact info for Chuck’s ex-wife. Wasn’t she somekind of musician or artist? She described travelling the world. Wouldn’t think it would be impossible for a PI to find her.
Just made me wonder about the Mike/door scene - other than that it allowed Mike to say he enjoyed fixing something, and amused by having Chuck flee the drill.
She was grateful to Jimmy at first - that was clear from her brief conversation with Chuck when she talks about how Jimmy was worried about him.
But ultimately she was used as a prop to devastate and humiliate her ex in public. In the aftermath that would have been clear and not terribly forgivable. Looks like we will see the blowback from that in the next episode.
The pictures were of minor importance and even when he was getting them Jimmy was pleased, but not over the moon. It was just a tiny bit of added ammo.
The address was the key acquisition and here it requires a fanwank. She made clear the fact that she traveled constantly for work and presumably Jimmy didn’t have time to track her down in a conventional way. Hence snagging her emergency contact information in the only place he could be sure to find it. Remember as someone pointed out up thread this was ten years ago when you couldn’t find everything on google in 20 minutes or less.
Yeah, I get that. But in the intro, when they made such a big deal about her being a globetrotter, it reminded me of my vague recollection that she was somewhat famous as an artist or violinist or something. Jimmy is readily able to find someone who can plant a battery on Chuck - seemed to me he could have hired a PI. Like I said - minor point. But the way some folk talk this show (and BB) up, I guess I notice such things.
He doesn’t have to make a big show of the pictures (like big blowups) - there’s no jury to impress and I’m sure all the lawyers on the panel had copies.
I think the main point of the pictures was to send them to Rebecca to convince her of the seriousness of Chuck’s condition. Remember, she told Chuck, “Jimmy sent me pictures of the house…”
I think she’s a musician in a symphony orchestra. Know any famous orchestra performers? I don’t. Conductors, soloists, sure. But not second chair violin in the Albequerque Philharmonic.
I think that Jimmy hopes that Rebecca can be relied upon to resume at least some of the duties of being Mrs McGill, de facto if not de jure. Chuck genuinely needs care and HHM is not the most appropriate forum. Even part time works.
Mike is a PI, though. He just found the address while he was doing the door and taking pictures. I really don’t get the complaint when he hired the most competent PI in either show!
The viewer I think has seen enough of Chuck to conclude he has a ‘true’ psychosomatic malady and has not been playing a ‘long con’. The recapper has a point that the distinction might be lost on the board, whose members haven’t seen all the same things. Still though, the guy was a senior partner at an apparently prestigious local law firm, but now essentially sidelined by his imagined illness. Who would consciously do that just to manipulate other people, unless nuts? Which is really the point Jimmy was making, whether just to get out from under this or really to also still Chuck with an ‘intervention’, Chuck is nuts.
Which includes imagining that electromagnetism causes you pain. One is not a bad person because mentally ill. And particular mental problems might not prevent one correctly analyzing situations, as Chuck correctly concluded Jimmy had scammed him on Mesa Verde. But it shoots one’s credibility to hell. That’s just life.
Also the viewer knows Chuck does have a deep seated grudge against Jimmy, which the board now also tends to believe I think, though again whether that’s part of ‘lucid Chuck’ or ‘nutty Chuck’ who can say.
As had to be the case for J&K’s strategy to work, the focus was on the tape. As some (including I) wondered, and show runners seem to realize needed to be addressed, what if the focus had been on ‘Jimmy committed a felony breaking in which he formally admitted’? The board might have taken the attitude that that alone is grounds for disbarment (might still in real world case I think). Which I think was the point of Howard subtly trying to suggest Chuck remove himself from the proceeding and have it gravitate to what Howard and the PI witnessed and Jimmy admitted to. Along they wrote it so the board was very interested in ‘destruction of evidence’, but again I think realistically the admitted breaking in felony might have been enough. Now it’s obvious Jimmy wins, and I guess it was never very likely Saul in BB was practicing while disbarred or had somehow gotten reinstated.
When Howard was trying to convince Chuck to avoid the proceeding, Chuck was worried that without the tape and his testimony that Jimmy would only get a year or two suspension for the breaking and entering.
But given that this was one brother breaking into the home of a long-incapacitated brother, for whom he’d been caretaker for years (and even had medical power of attorney)—the concerned brother having reason to believe the ill brother’s condition had deteriorated—in those circumstances would a felony conviction and/or disbarment be likely?
I think the writers had to keep the tape in play. If the focus had solely been on the fact of Jimmy breaking down Chuck’s door, the case would seem too weak, given that Jimmy had been caretaker for so long and that Chuck had just provided evidence to Jimmy that his illness had escalated (even if that evidence had been staged).
Yeah I think they ultimately made it reasonably convincing that Chuck’s ego wouldn’t let him stand aside and take any ‘risk’ of Jimmy getting off with less than disbarment, even if Howard could see the downside in that (admittedly more from perspective of limiting risk to his firm’s reputation, not as much reason for him to care what happened to Jimmy) as the focus of the inquiry could be shifted to Chuck and how he might end up looking crazy. It’s not that implausible as fictional shows go. I’d just have been a lot less confident in Jimmy’s position, and not just worrying Huel’s plane would be too late for him to plant the battery. Just the possibility Chuck’s side would play it smarter, just focus on what others witnessed and Jimmy admitted to, and board wouldn’t see the brother to brother dynamic as mitigating, enough, the general idea that felons should be disbarred.
Isn’t there some sort of right of the accused against self-incrimination in any event? It’s why people plead the fifth. If Jimmy was being recorded surreptitiously, which he was, then one can not take an admission on tape over a live actual confession or non-confession. I don’t seem to recall them even asking him if the things he he said on the tape were true.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
